Nicos Sampson

NICOS SAMPSON, who has died aged 66, was the most notorious of the Eoka terrorists, and the President of Cyprus for eight days before the Turkish army invaded the island in 1974.

He was born Nicos Georghiades in Famagusta, Cyprus, in 1934. By the time of the rebellion against the British in the 1950s he was making a reputation as a brash and energetic photojournalist for the English-language Times of Cyprus, based in Nicosia, and had changed his surname to Sampson in an attempt to make his by-line stand out. The young Sampson was soon distinguished by his ability to be first on the scene of a shooting, but his scoops were explained some years later when he boasted in a newspaper of having murdered more than 15 British policemen and civilians.

The articles told of his time as a leading member of the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (Eoka) during its guerrilla war against the British. After joining in 1955, Sampson had soon begun "throwing grenades and organising riots". By 1957, it had dawned on the authorities that Sampson might be doing the shootings as well as the photography. He was accused by the British of being the chief "executioner" on Ledra Street, Nicosia's so-called "Murder Mile" where more than a dozen British soldiers and civilians had been shot dead by the terrorists. (One of the victims was Angus MacDonald, a fellow journalist on the Times of Cyprus, who had been drinking with Sampson shortly before).

At his trial, Sampson maintained that he had been tortured into confessing to the murder of a British police sergeant, saying he had been beaten and had broken glass pushed under his finger nails. He was acquitted after Mr Justice Bernard Shaw decided that the prosecution had failed to prove that his confession was voluntary.

Sampson was kept in custody, however, and the next month he was convicted of carrying a Sten gun and aiming it at four British policemen. Under the emergency regulations the judge this time had no alternative but to pass the death sentence. The Governor of Cyprus, Field Marshal Sir John Harding, later commuted the sentence to life imprisonment in view of the calmer political situation, and for fear of Eoka calling off the truce that had been declared. Sampson was then flown to Britain to be imprisoned at Wormwood Scrubs.

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In 1960, he and several others of Eoka's "alley heroes" flew back to Nicosia as free men following an amnesty granted at the time of Cyprus's independence from British rule. Welcoming them, Archbishop Makarios, the country's first elected president, said: "In you the Cypriot people hail the pioneer of the ideals that have been realised. To you more than anyone the supreme boon of freedom is due. You are the incarnation of the spirit of Greek virtue. Villages and towns ring with your epic story." The crowd then lifted Sampson and the other freed men shoulder high.

Sampson soon became editor of the newspaper Makhi (Combat), and quickly accumulated race horses and fast cars from Cypriot businessmen eager to show their patriotism. He flew to Algeria to interview Ben Bella and to Washington to talk to J F Kennedy. In 1961 he again appeared in court, charged with the murder of a British architect, Peter Grey, but he was released three days later, declaring: "It would be impossible for me to consider murdering a British citizen.

" I bear no grudge for my arrest, but believe it was because of my stand against the British during the struggle for liberty.". The next month, however, he published his confessional articles, keen, so it was suggested, to boost the circulation of his newspaper.

During the 1960s, Sampson became a bitter opponent of President Makarios and was at the forefront of those who continued to demand enosis (unity) with Greece. His hysterical outbursts in the pages of his newspaper did much to inflame relations between Greek and Turkish-speaking Cypriots.

On several occasions, Sampson flew to Athens to exhort the Greek military dictatorship to "take action" in Cyprus. He meanwhile continued to whip up anti-British feeling, at one stage reporting that the British intelligence service had planned to assassinate President Makarios. During inter-ethnic clashes that erupted in Cyprus in 1964, Sampson led a tribal militia fighting against Turkish Cypriots - who called him "the most hated Greek Cypriot". His men used armoured bulldozers to knock down Turkish houses.

At the time, Sampson said that politics bored him, but claimed to wield more power than any member of the cabinet. Nobody, he said "likes to say 'No' to Nicos". But despite his disdain for the democratic process, in 1970 he was elected to parliament on a Right-wing platform. Four years later, after the violent coup that toppled Makarios, he was installed as the country's leader, telling his fellow Cypriots: "In the name of God and the people, and in the name of the Armed Forces, I have assumed the Presidency of Cyprus." His appointment - in reality as no more than a figurehead - was the doing of Greece's military junta.

After taking power, Sampson promised that "the Turkish minority is in no danger." More than 1,000 supporters of Makarios were taken to jail. Sampson was forced to resign, however, just eight days later when Turkey invaded the island, ostensibly to prevent a union with Greece. After Makarios was restored as President, Sampson was tried and in 1976 sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for his role in the coup.

For his part, he always maintained that he was not involved in carrying out the putsch, and only agreed to accept the presidency offered to him by the Greek junta in order to put an end to the fratricidal conflict. After his release from prison in 1991, he became a publisher.

Nicos Sampson is survived by his wife, Vera, and by a son and a daughter.